Date Rape Intervention Story

Being strong, young, and fit does not make you good at bystander intervention. Here is a story of where bold and strong would have led to a bad outcome.

You can read the whole story here, but I will be condensing it as we go along.

The situation: A crude man was threatening a young woman on a date. He was saying (in foul language) that she would be giving him sex that evening. She objected. He reminded her that he knew where she lived… In the opinion of the author, he was clear that she needed help.

Active bystander One: He’s twenty-three. He’s fit. He’s not one of those “get involved types”, but he is not going to sit by and let this happen. He states that he had “no idea” what he was going to do. He gets up…

Active bystander Two: He’s in his fifties. He’s fit. He clearly is one of those “get involved types”; he’s watched the same situation and has come over to intervene.

What happened next?

Active bystander One — the twenty-three year old (and the author of the story) — got up, unprepared, with a vague intention to punch out the lights of the crude, harassing man.

Active bystander Two – a man in his fifties — gently gets number One’s attention and tells him to stand down.

Then active bystander Two takes over. He uses the social power he has. He’s an off-duty policeman. He shows his police ID, explains to the harassing man that he has committed a crime in front of witnesses. He give the harasser an ultimatum: pay for dinner and leave, or be arrested.

The policeman also did follow-up with the target of the harassment. This is a step that active bystanders often miss. This is the most important part of this particular intervention.

He offered to support the target, if she chose to have the man arrested anyway.

He took the identification of the harassing man, in the event that he returns to this woman’s house in the future.

The policeman offered that she could finish the meal with his family. He provided her a ride home.

What could have gone wrong?

If active bystander One had intervened alone, the target could have been more harmed, in the long run:

The harassing man could believe that what he did wrong was gaining the attention of another man. Therefore:

The harassing man threatened to rape the targeted woman, in her home, if she did not comply with his demand for sex. Bystander One had no capacity to stop that. The harasser still knew where she lived.

The harassing man might even be more motivated to pursue this woman at her home, since he “got in trouble” because of her.

The harasser learned how to be more effective when dating women he intends to rape. He needs to be quieter about it.

More women will be raped by this man. Nothing happened that would make him stop.

The active bystander would have started a fist-fight. Both he and harassing man could have been arrested.

The targeted woman was reluctant to press charges. If her date was attacked in the restaurant, it would have made it more difficult for her to file a complaint.

The harassing man could see himself as a “victim” of some other guy who wanted his date. (In that case, the target is still nothing but a sex object. The harasser could think he lost her because the other guy would be “getting” her.)

What could have gone better?

With active bystander Two’s intervention, the harassing man learned a few things that curtail some of his behavior:

He could be arrested for talking to women this way.

The local police now know his name.

He has pissed off one specific policeman.

He will need to leave this particular woman alone.

But, he also learned that cannot threaten women, loudly, in public. He may go on raping women. He’ll just need to be more careful to avoid attention that can lead to arrest.

What we don’t know:

Race: None of the people in this story were identified by race. Since none were, chances are they were all white. Would the situation have gone differently if the harassing man was black, and all the others were white? What if the targeted woman was the only black person in the room? What if active bystander One was a twenty-three year old black man who aimed at punching out the lights of a white restaurant patron?

I want the author of this bystander story to come to my class. I’ll comp his fee. He has good moral instincts, but he needs some training.

RSS Feed

Categories

Archives

Rona Fischman is the owner of 4 Buyers Real Estate, an agency which serves real estate buyers in the Boston, MA area.
"Our loyalty is to buyers, and only buyers. We are passionate about our client’s comfort in making this important decision."